CHRISTOPHE JACROT

Roger Miller once supposedly said “Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet". Christophe Jacrot might get wet, but he walks in the rain, smells it, hears it and feels it. Boy, are we lucky that he is not only a friend of weather, not only capable of seeing the allure of rain in all its facades but also a skilled and talented photographer portraying such beautiful glimpses of life subjected to the elements.

His powerful yet detached images are atmospherically dense, meticulously composed and through what reminds us of cinematic language, gives a sense of being near and palpable.

Some people walk in the rain, some just get wet… Christophe's body of work shows us what we are missing when we don’t take time to walk and watch, smell, hear. We think there will be far fewer people just getting wet thanks to Christophe showing us the poetry of rain and storm.

Christophe Jacrot was born in 1960 and lives in Paris. He has been into photography since he was a child, but he made his name through cinema first. He has directed a number of short films, a lot of them having received prizes. One of them was Lifting (Special Jury Prize at the Avoriaz festival, and Press Prize at the Chamrousse festival in 1989); another was Soutien de Famille (First Youth Prize at the Montecatini festival in 1994, Special Public Prize in Prades in 1996). In 2000, he directed a full-feature movie Prison à Domicile, which also starred Elie Kakou in his last role.

However, Christophe Jacrot found it difficult to develop other projects at the cinema and this in turn led him to photography, an art he can practice alone and with no constraints. His work on bad weather and downpours started when he was asked to take pictures of Paris in the sun for a travel guide. He explained how “the weather was desperately bad, and it gave [him] the desire to take an opposite stance to the traditional Paris photos and seize these atmospheres at it had rarely been done. [He] had in mind the fabulous portrait Henri Cartier-Bresson had taken of Giacometti under pouring rain, and of the photo of a man umping in front of a puddle at the Trocadero which Eliott Erwitt had taken.”

His first exhibit was called Paris in the Rain, at the Lucernaire in Paris, in October 2007; it immediately led to the publication of a book at le Chêne publications. Today, he has exhibits in Paris, New York, Boston, and Istanbul. Christophe Jacrot is a bad weather globe trotter who hunts the poetry of rain and storms on all the continents.

H E I S T

HEIST is a forward-thinking contemporary photography collective that encourages engagement between collectors and artists from around the world, providing accessibility and informative understanding into the medium of fine-art photography.